How to succeed as a content marketer at a big company

In the last 12 months, I went from a company of one to a product marketer at a 40-person startup to a content marketer at a 1,600-person enterprise. My work life has changed dramatically, even if you don’t count all the AI changes over the last year. 

A few months ago, I wrote about my short-but-glorious time as a product marketer. My favorite part of that experience was how close I was to the action. At Miro, I’m much further from the action (meaning the product itself) but I’m learning a ton about how good marketing happens at a large company. 

I’ll admit that I was skeptical when I learned Reforge was being acquired by Miro. Reforge was about 40 people at the time and that still felt huge after spending five years as Superpath’s only full-time employee. Many years ago, I briefly worked at QuickBooks as a contractor and I was overwhelmed by how massive the organization was. Still, this felt different since I’d be a full-time member of the marketing org and rather than the hired gun I was at QuickBooks. I figured I’d dive in with two feet and see what happened. 

I’m five months into this and I’ve learned a ton, which I’ll share today. I hope that by documenting my own experience, others get a sense of the differences between startups and enterprises. Neither is better or worse, harder or easier. I’ve spent so much time at small companies in my career that I developed a bit of an elitist attitude about working fast and being a generalist. I still think those two things are useful, but I’ve softened my stance. The work and skills are different, but I have to say I’m really enjoying it.

The stakes are higher therefore you need to get it right

At a large company, shipping almost anything is much more difficult. The degree of difficulty is the sum of alignment, coordination, communication, buy-in and project management. My startup bias tells me that these things are a waste of time, but seeing it up close gives me a different perspective.

A large marketing org has to be in sync, otherwise it’s just a collection of people talking about different things, at different times. That creates a very disjointed and potentially confusing experience for potential customers. The messaging and position has to be consistent. The paid campaigns must go out at the right time. The content is required to align with company priorities.

Once I accepted that things are inherently a little harder at a big company, I’ve become extremely impressed by how good the team is. The skills are different. We do spend less time writing/building/shipping and more time planning. We also have more meetings than I’m used to because we need to coordinate across content, PMM, social and brand. I also stay in touch with the GTM and event teams, plus a handful of people on sales. I want to be plugged in so I can make sure my work (which right now is launching and running Miro’s Substack) is as impactful as possible.

You might say, “Yea, but you can reach way more people so it should be easier.” Yes, we have real budgets that make that part way easier. And Miro is a very well-known product, so we have plenty of followers and subscribers. The scale is much bigger than I’m used to and that is kind of the point. The stakes are higher therefore you need to get it right. The time we spend scoping, planning and aligning is well worth it.

Having access to real resources is absolutely wonderful

On that point, I absolutely love having resources like budget and specialized support. My favorite example of this is our PR team. I’ve never been on a team that could really afford to do PR, so even though we knew it would be useful, we couldn’t really get distracted by it. 

But we have a PR team and they have PR agencies. And it is WONDERFUL. They recognize the value of thought leadership content to help secure placements and interviews for our execs, so we work closely together to make sure that content pieces are accompanied by briefs that PR can use. I’m learning how they work and think, which helps me think ahead a bit on content. 

Let’s say I interview an exec so that I can write a piece on their behalf for our Substack. If I can coin a term based on their insights, it makes the PR team’s job much easier. Now they have some catchy short-hand to describe a pattern happening at other companies too. But our execs are the real experts because they understand it well enough to have named it. Next thing you know, they are giving keynotes and being interviewed on podcasts about that term. (This has actually been happening and it’s been so cool to see.)

Now that I’ve seen it happen in real life, I’ll never look at thought leadership content the same way. A blog post is great but it’s only a start. We’re taking the concepts we create and turning them into bylines, interviews, fireside chats, decks, and guest posts. To be clear, this is all outside my scope but the company believes this is an important part of marketing and ensures the right resources. I find it especially fulfilling to work on content knowing that the work will go far beyond the text that I write. 

Being a good teammate goes a really long way

This isn’t unique to large companies, but it hits different. There are at least two ways to be a good teammate at a large company.

One way is to make it feel much smaller. Imagine having 1,600 people in a Slack channel or on an all-hands call. It is overwhelming! I don’t know 95% of them. In my first few weeks, I met a few people who were especially helpful as I got up and running. The type of people who will jump on a call just to answer my basic questions and get me up to speed on what’s happening at the company. This made the company feel so much smaller and I am so grateful to them. I’m still relatively new, but I am trying to pay it forward as we bring on new people. 

Another is to be reliable. My very first project was a bit of an experiment. My manager was giving a presentation and asked me to help with the deck. He gave me some notes on what he wanted to say and I decided to go hard. And we freaking nailed it. He loved the presentation and so did the audience he presented it to. He was kind enough to give me a shout out to the entire company and that gave me a reputation as being reliable with a high stakes project on a tight deadline. As a result, I ended up getting shifted to another team which is a perfect fit for the work I want to do. I try to live up to it by getting back to people quickly, showing up prepared for calls, and working hard to ship things I’m proud of. 

These are little things, but they add up so much. Does being kind and reliable help at a startup? Yes, of course, but maybe not as much as moving quickly and shipping. Miro is large enough that you can get lost. Being kind to people makes it a good place to work. Being reliable helps you get the projects you want. 

Is bigger better?

In some ways, yes! This surprised me. I honestly thought I’d get bored but it’s just the opposite. There’s so much to learn. And Miro was once a tiny startup, so it’s cool to have that perspective if I ever go back to a small company. 

Am I honing the technical skills that make one person an effective startup marketer? No, not really. But I am growing a “soft” skillset that I believe is equally valuable. 

And for my next act, I will attempt to get a job at a 100,000-person corporation so I can continue this series.